On Tue, 10 Nov 1998, Brad De Long wrote: > The European communists did something that led the societies they ruled a > lot further away from utopia than were the social democracies of western > Europe... or even the not-very-social democracy that is the United States. Those societies were never exactly utopias to begin with, Brad. Eastern Europe was ruled over by twisted, anti-Semitic, clerical-fascist regimes, ruling over unindustrialized agrarian societies (the Czechs were maybe the one exception here, but even they were a semiperipheral economy in 1938) so Stalinism's breakneck industrialization, horrible as it sounds, was actually an improvement over what they had. The Western CP's were always pretty democratic and fought for some basic social and economic rights for workers, whatever their ideological take on the East. This is not an excuse for bloodshed and repression, of course. But the true horror is that Stalinism did to the Eastern bloc pretty much what the US did to Latin America or what France did to Algeria or the ci-devant Indochina or Britain did to Ireland etc. etc. ad horribilis. To their credit, the E-Europeans resisted guerilla-style and managed to turn many of the tools of the oppressor against them -- which is maybe why they're preparing to join the EU while Latin America languishes in neocolonial bondage. -- Dennis
